How to Use a Facebook Group to Expand Your Business Reach

How to Use a Facebook Group to Expand Your Business Reach

In this day and age, not a single business can afford to neglect its social media presence.

With shoppers increasingly relying on social reviews when making purchases, and people connecting with brands on a more personal level online, this is a pool of opportunities your brand needs to utilise in order to grow.

Facebook is one of the key social networks where your presence truly counts for your brand awareness, engagement levels, as well as building long-term loyalty. However, a vast majority of modern brands still opt for building a page instead of a group, while both of these options have their own dynamics and benefits for your business.

While building your presence on a Facebook page is a valid way of getting more traction, the purpose of a group can be somewhat different, albeit with similar positive outcomes for your return on investment and brand image.

Let’s see how you can put a Facebook Group for your business to work so that you can maximise your potential to connect with your audience:

Build your own rulebook.

Facebook may be entertaining to an extent, but your Facebook business group shouldn’t turn into a free-for-all spam-filled ad board where anyone can post anything without consequences. In fact, rules and guidelines are there in order to be able to filter out the people with ulterior motifs and those who will wreak havoc on your efforts to actually stay on point.

If your goal is to build a community with a certain group of people who share your values, you need to set the tone for it from day one.

This will help you remove any spam content and members who persist with any unwanted behaviour. Make sure to pin this particular post for the very top of your group, so that anyone new who joins will instantly see and get educated upon arrival.

Bring on the action.

For any Facebook Group to come to life and serve its purpose, it needs to be brimming with activity that will serve as an inspiration to others to join the conversation. This is especially vital in the early stages of setting up a group on Facebook, as you’ll need to invest hours of your time sparking interest, sharing relevant content, asking questions to increase engagement, and responding to comments.

When someone else starts a new conversation, it’s up to you to encourage them further and give them your undivided attention. That way, other members will join in and feel equally valued when they share their own input.

Numbers do matter.

In a way, any activity is better than no activity at all, but when your goal is to reach greater audiences and build brand awareness, quality should come first. As your activity levels and your member count both start to grow, you can utilise digital marketing reporting tools to monitor the success of your posts and the levels of resulting engagement. This will help you discover which posts get the most attention, the best response, as well as their timing, and the amount of exposure.

You can use this information to tailor more appropriate campaigns, compare your organic with your paid reach, and make adjustments where needed. This is invaluable knowledge that will help you understand your target audience better and ultimately build a stronger, long-lasting bond with them through social engagement.

Balance promotional vs educational content.

Even though it’s clear you have started this Facebook Group with the objective to increase your sales, it would be counterproductive if you used Facebook as a sell-only platform. Posts that are strongly promotional in nature are annoying for approximately 60% of your audience, and since social networks are striving to build even more options to get more personal, this number is likely going to rise.

After all, the very same guidelines that you enforce for your group should apply to your social media managers. Pushing your sales pitch, brand mentions and links where they serve no purpose will be a ‘turn off’ for the majority of your audience. Instead, focus on delivering content that will educate, inform, inspire, and encourage.

Grow credibility.

The key to your success? People. In essence, your members, other groups’ administrators, and influencers alike can help spread the word on what you’re doing in your own group. Once you’ve got the proverbial ball rolling, you can encourage your most active members to ‘promote’ your Facebook Group and invite more people to join the chitchat.

You can take the time to build your own presence in other related groups and then after you’ve managed to provide value, ask if you can share your group’s link with their members. Just stopping by to promote yourself would be annoying, and if you wouldn’t put up with it, why should anyone else?

Furthermore, social media influencers and relevant experts in your niche can make a huge difference if and when they decide to join your community. A subtle way to inspire them would be to share their content in your group, tag and thank them for their insight, and in time, you can either invite them or simply allow them to make the call on their own.

Finally, it goes without saying, that any social media growth needs a budget as well, so make sure to support these steps with paid ads.

However, remember that no amount of funds can replicate or fake the impact you’ll have once you begin implementing these simple steps into your strategy.